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POEMS 

1916-1918 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN 

THE CRESCENT MOON 

THE IRON AGE 

THE DARK TOWER 

DEEP SEA 

UNDERGROWTH 

(with E. Brett Young) 

MARCHING ON TANGA 
E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 

NEW YORK 



POEMS 

1916-1918 



BY 



FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG 

Author of *' Marching on Tanga," etc. 




NEW YORK 
E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 

68 1 FIFTH AVENUE 



4 

Copyright, 1920 /^ \ 
By E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 



All Rights Reserved 



Printed in the United States of America 



«Ay 20 1920 



©CI.A570049 



TO 

EDYTH GOODALL 



Remember thus our sweet conspiracy: 
That I, having dreamed a lovely thing, with dull 
Words marred it — and you gave it back to me 
A thousand^ thousand times more beautiful. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Prothalamion i 

Testament 3 

Lochanilaun 10 

Lettermore 1 1 

Lament 13 

The Lemon-tree 14 

Phthonos 15 

Easter 16 

The Leaning Elm 17 

The Joyous Lover 20 

Dead Poets 22 

Porton Water 26 

An Old House 28 

The Dhows 31 

The Gift 33 

Five Degrees South 34 

104° Fahrenheit 35 

Fever-Trees 36 

The Rain-Bird 37 

Moths 39 

Bete Humaine 41 

Doves 42 

Song 44 



Vll 



PAGE 

Before Action 46 

On a Subaltern Killed in Action 48 

After Action 53 

Sonnet 54 

A Farewell to Africa 55 

Song 56 

The Hawthorn Spray 58 

The Pavement 59 

To Lydia Lopokova (i) 61 

To Lydia Lopokova (ii) 61 

To Lydia Lopokova (iii) 62 

Ghostly Loves 64 

February 65 

Song of the Dark Ages 67 

Winter Sunset 69 

Song 70 

England, April, 1918 71 

Slender Themes 72 

Invocation 73 

Thamar 75 

Envoi 98 



W" 



Vlll 



POEMS 

1916-1918 



Prothalamion 

When the evening came my love said to me : 

Let us go into the garden now that the sky is cool, 

The garden of black hellebore and rosemary, 
Where v^ild v^oodruff spills in a milky pool. 

Low we passed in the twilight, for the wavering heat 
Of day had waned, and round that shaded plot 

Of secret beauty the thickets clustered sweet : 

Here is heaven, our hearts whispered, but our lips 

spake not. 

Between that old garden and seas of lazy foam 
Gloomy and beautiful alleys of trees arise 

With spire of cypress and dreamy beechen dome. 
So dark that our enchanted sight knew nothing but 

the skies 



Veiled with soft air, drench'd in the roses' musk 
Or the dusky, dark carnation's breath of clove; 

No stars burned in their deeps, but through the dusk 
I saw my love's eyes, and they were brimmed with 

love. 

No star their secret ravished, no wasting moon 

Mocked the sad transience of those eternal hours: 

Only the soft, unseeing heaven of June, 
The ghosts of great trees, and the sleeping flowers. 

For doves that crooned in the leafy noonday now 
Were silent; the night-jar sought his secret covers. 

Nor even a mild sea-whisper moved a creaking bough — 
Was ever a silence deeper made for lovers? 

Was ever a moment meeter made for love? 

Beautiful are your closed lips beneath my kiss; 
And all your yielding sweetness beautiful — 

Oh, never in all the world was such a night as this! 



Testament 

If I had died, and never seen the dawn 

For which I hardly hoped, lighting this lawn 

Of silvery grasses ; if there had been no light. 

And last night merged into perpetual night; 

I doubt if I should ever have been content 

To have closed my eyes w^ithout some testament 

To the great benefits that marked my faring 

Through the sweet world ; for all my joy was sharing 

And lonely pleasures were few. Unto which end 

Three legacies Til send, 

Three legacies, already half possessed: 

One to a friend, of all good friends the best, 

Better than which is nothing; j'-et another 

Unto thy twin, dissimilar spirit, Brother; 

The third to you, 

Most beautiful, most true. 



Most perfect one, to whom they all are due. 
Quick, quick . . . while there is time. . . . 
O best of friends, I leave you one sublime 
Summer, one fadeless summer. 'Twas begun 
Ere Cotswold hawthorn tarnished in the sun, 
When hedges were fledged with green, and early swal- 
lows 
Swift-darting, on curved wings, pillaged the fallows; 
When all our vale was dappled blossom and light. 
And oh, the scent of beanfields in the night! 
You shall remember that rich dust at even 
Which made old Evesham like a street in heaven, 
Gold-paved, and washed v/ithin a wave of golden 
Air all her dreamy towers and gables olden. 
You shall remember 

How arms sun-blistered, hot palms crack'd with rowing, 
Clove the cool water of Avon, sweetly flowing; 
And how our bodies, beautifully white. 
Stretched to a long stroke lengthened in green light. 
And we, emerging, laughed in childish wise, 
And pressed the kissing water from our eyes. 
Ahy was our laughter childish, or were we wise? 

4 



And then, crown of the day, a tired returning 
When happy sunsets over Bredon burning, 
With music and with moonlight, and good ale, 
And no thought for the morrow. . . . Heavy phlox 
Our garden pathways bordered, and evening stocks, 
Those humble weeds, in sunlight withered and pale, 
With a night scent to match the nightingale. 
Gladdened with spiced sweetness sweet night's shadows, 
Meeting the breath of hay from mowing meadows : 
As humble was our joy, and as intense 
Our rapture. So, before I hurry hence, 
Yours be the memory. 

One night again, 
When we were men, and had striven, and known pain. 
By a dark canal debating, unresigned. 
On the blind fate that shadows humankind, 
On the blind sword that severs human love . . .1) 
Then did the hidden belfry from above 
On troubled minds in benediction shed 
The patience of the great anonymous dead 
Who reared those towers, those high cathedrals builded 
In solemn stone, and with clear fancy gilded 

5 



A beauty beyond ours, trusting in God. 
Then dared we follow the dark way they trod, 
And bowing to the universal plan 
Trust in the true and fiery spirit of Man. 

And you, my Brother, 
You know, as knows one other, 
How my spirit revisiteth a room 
In a high wing, beneath pine-trees, where gloom 
Dwelleth, dispelled by resinous wood embers, 
Where, in half-darkness . , , How the heart remem- 
bers . . . 
We talked of beauty, and those fiery things 
To which the divine desirous spirit clings, 
In a wingM rapture to that heaven flinging, 
Where beauty is an easy thing, and singing 
The natural speech of man. Like kissing swords 
Our wits clashed there; the brittle beauty of words 
Breaking, seemed to discover its secret heart 
And all the rapt elusiveness of Art. 
Now I have known sorrow, and now I sing 
That a lovely word is not an idle thing; 
6 



For as with stars the cloth of night is spangled, 

With star-like words, most lovelily entangled, 

The woof of sombre thought is deckt. . . . Ah, bright 

And cold they glitter in the spirit's night! 

But neither distant nor dispassionate; 

For beauty is an armour against fate. . . y ^ 

I tell you, who have stood in the dark alone.. 

Seeing the face that turneth all to stone, 

Medusa, blind with hate, 

While I was dying. Beauty sate with me 

Nor tortured any longer; gracious was she; 

To her soft words I listened, and was content 

To die, nor sorry that my light was spent. 

So, Brother, if I come not home. 

Go to that little room 

That my spirit revisiteth, and there. 

Somewhere in the blue air, you shall discover 

If that you be a lover 

Nor haughtily minded, all that once half-shaped 

Then fled us, and escaped : 

All that I found that day. 

Far, so far away. 

7 



And you, my lovely one, 

What can I leave to you, who, you having left, 

Am utterly bereft? 

What silences, what hours 

Is not already yours? 

What silences what hours 

Of peace passing all understanding; days 

Made lyric by your beauty and its praise; 

Years neither time can tarnish, nor death mar, 

Wherein you shined as steadfast as a star 

In my bleak night, heedless of the cloud-wrack 

Scudding in torn fleeces black 

Of my dark moods, as those who rule the far 

Star-haunted pleasaunces of heaven are? 

So think but lightly of that afternoon 

With white clouds climbing a blue sky in June 

When a boy worshipped under dreaming trees, 

Who touched your hand, and sought your eyes. 

. . . Ah, cease, 
Not these, not these . . . 

Nor yet those nights when icy Brathay thundered 
Under his bridges, and ghostly mountains wondered 

8 



At the white blossoming of a Christmas rose 

More stainless than their snows; 

Nor even of those placid days together 

Mellow as early autumn's amber weather 

When beech is ankleted with fire, and old 

Elms wear their livery of yellow gold, 

When orchards all are laden with increase, 

And the quiet earth hath fruited, and knows peace 

Oh, think not overmuch on those sweet years 

Lest their last fruit be tears, — 

Your tears, beloved, that were my utmost pain,-^ 

But rather, dream again 

How that a lover, half poet and half child, 

An eager spirit of fragile fancies wild 

Compact, adored the beauty and truth in you: 

To your own truth be true ; 

And when, not mournfully, you turn this page 

Consider still your starry heritage. 

Continue in your loveliness, a star 

To gladden me from afar 

Even where there is no light 

In my last night. 

9 



Lochanilaun 

This is the image of my last content: 
My soul shall be a little lonely lake, 
So hidden that no shadow of man may break 
The folding of its mountain battlement; 
Only the beautiful and innocent 
Whiteness of sea-born cloud drooping to shake 
Cool rain upon the reed-beds, or the wake 
Of churn'd cloud in a howling wind's descent. 
For there shall be no terror in the night 
When stars that I have loved are born in me, 
And cloudy darkness I will hold most fair; 
But this shall be the end of my delight: 
That you, my lovely one, may stoop and see 
Your image in the mirrored beauty there. 



lO 



Lettermore 



These winter da^^s on Lettermore 
The brown west wind it sweeps the bay, 
And icy rain beats on the bare 
Unhomely fields that perish there: 
The stony fields of Lettermore 
That drink the white Atlantic spray. 

And men who starve on Lettermore, 
Cursing the haggard, hungry surf, 
Will souse the autumn's bruised grains 
To light dark fires within their brains 
And fight with stones on Lettermore 
Or sprawl beside the smoky turf. 

When spring blows over Lettermore 
To bloom the ragged furze with gold. 
The lovely south wind's living breath 
Is laden with the smell of death : 
For fever breeds on Lettermore 
To waste the eyes of young and old. 

II 



A black van comes to Lettermore; 
The horses stumble on the stones, 
The drivers curse, — for it is hard 
To cross the hills from Oughterard 
And cart the sick from Lettermore: 
A stinking load of rags and bones. 

But you will go to Lettermore 
When v^hite sea-trout are on the run. 
When purple glows between the rocks 
About Lord Dudley's fishing-box 
Adown the road to Lettermore, 
And wide seas tarnish in the sun. 

And so you'll think of Lettermore 

As a lost island of the blest: 

With peasant lovers in a blue 

Dim dusk, with heather drench'd in dew, 

And the sweet peace of Lettermore 

Remote and dreaming in the West. 



12 



Lament 



Once, I think, a finer fire 
Touched my lips, and then I sang 
Half the songs of my desire : 
With their splendour the world rang. 

And their sweetness made me free 
Of those starry ways whereby 
Planets make their minstrelsy 
In echoing, unending sky. 

So, before that spell was broken, 
Song of the wind, surge of the sea, — 
Beautiful passionate things unspoken 
Rose like a breaking wave in me : 

Rose like a wave with curled crest 
That green sunlight splinters through . . . 
But the wave broke within my breast : 
And now I am a man like you. 

13 



The Lemon-Tree 



Last night, last night, a vision of you 
Sweetly troubled my waking dream : 
Beneath the clear Algerian blue 
You stood with lifted eyes : the beam 
Of a winter sun beat on the crown 
Of a lemon-tree whose delicate fruit 
Like pale lamps hung airily down ; 
And in your gazing eyes a mute 
And lovely wonder. . . . Have I sung 
Of slender things and naught beside? 
You were so beautifully young 
I must have kissed you or have died. 



14 



Phthonos 

If, in high jealousy, God made me blind 

And laughed to see me stumble in the night, 

Driving his many-splintered arrows of light 

Into that lost dominion of my mind; 

Then, knowing me still unvext and unresigned. 

Stole from my ears all homely sounds that might 

Temper the darkness, saying, in heaven's despite, 

I had not wholly left the world behind; 

So, sunless, soundless, if, to make an end. 

He smote the nerves that move, the nerves that feel : 

Even then, O jealous one, I would not complain 

If I were spared the wealth I cannot spend. 

If I were left the treasure none can steal : 

The lovely words that wander through my brain. 



15 



Easter 



Adown our lane at Eastertide 
Hosts of dancing bluebells lay 
In pools of light : and ^Oh,' you cried, 
*Look, look at them : I think that they 
Are bluer than the laughing sea,' 
And 'Look!' you cried, *a piece of the sky 
Has fallen down for you and me 
To gaze upon and love.' . . . And I, 
Seeing in your eyes the dancing blue 
And in your heart the innocent birth 
Of a pure delight, I knew, I knew 
That heaven had fallen upon earth. 



i6 



The Leaning Elm 

Before my window, in days of winter hoar 

Huddled a mournful wood : 

Smooth pillars of beech, domed chestnut, sycamore, 

In stony sleep they stood : 

But you, unhappy elm, the angry west 

Had chosen from the rest. 

Flung broken on your brothers' branches bare, 

And left you leaning there 

So dead that when the breath of winter cast 

Wild snow upon the blast. 

The other living branches, downward bowed, 

Shook free their crystal shroud 

And shed upon your blackened trunk beneath. 

Their livery of death. . . . 

On windless nights between the beechen bars 

I watched cold stars 

Throb whitely in the sky, and dreamily 

17 



Wondered if any life lay locked in thee: 

If still the hidden sap secretly moved, 

As water in the icy winterbourne 

Floweth unheard; 

And half I pitied you your trance forlorn: 

You could not hear, I thought, the voice of any bird, 

The shadowy cries of bats in dim twilight 

Or cool voices of owls crying by night. . . . 

Hunting by night under the horned moon : 

Yet half I envied you your wintry swoon. 

Till, on this morning mild, the sun, new-risen 

Steals from his misty prison; 

The frozen fallows glow, the black trees shaken 

In a clear flood of sunlight vibrating awaken : 

And lo, your ravaged bole, beyond belief 

Slenderly fledged anew with tender leaf 

As pale as those twin vanes that break at last 

In a tiny fan above the black beech-mast 

Where no blade springeth green 

But pallid bells of the shy helleborine. 

What is this ecstasy that overwhelms 

The dreaming earth? See, the embrowned elms 

i8 



Crowding purple distances warm the depths of the 

wood ; 
A new-born wind tosses their tassels brown, 
His white clouds dapple the down; 
Into a green flame bursting the hedgerows stand; 
Soon, with banners flying, Spring will walk the 

land. . . . 

There is no day for thee, my soul, like this. 

No spring of lovely words. Nay, even the kiss 

Of mortal love that maketh man divine 

This light cannot outshine : 

Nay, even poets, they whose frail hands catch 

The shadow of vanishing beauty, may not match 

This leafy ecstasy. Sweet words may cull 

Such magical beauty as time may not destroy; 

But we, alas, are not more beautiful : 

We cannot flower in beauty as in joy. 

We sing, our mused words are sped, and then 

Poets are only men 

Who age, and toil, and sicken. . . . This maim'd tree 

May stand in leaf when I have ceased to be. 

19 



The Joyous Lover 

O, NOW that I am free as the air 
And fleet as clouds above, 
I will wander ever)rwhere 
Over the ways I love. 

Lightly, lightly will I pass 
Nor scatter as I go 
A shadow on the blowing grass 
Or a footprint in the snow. 

All the wild things of the wood 
That once were timid and shy 
They shall not flee their solitude 
For fear, when I pass by; 

And beauty, beauty, the wide world over, 
Shall blush when I draw near: 
She knows her lover, the joyous lover, 
And greets him without fear. 
20 



But if I come to the dark room 
From which our love hath fled 
And bend above you in the gloom 
Or kneel beside your bed, 

Smile soft in your sleep, my beautiful one, 
For if you should say ^Nay' 
To the dream which visiteth you alone, 
My joy would wither away.. 



21 



Dead Poets 

ODE WRITTEN AT WILTON HOUSE 

Last night, amazed, I trod on holy ground 
Breathing an air that ancient poets knew, 
Where, in a valley compassed with sweet sound, 
Beneath a garden's alley'd shades of yew, 
With eager feet passed that singer sweet 
Who Stella loved, whom bloody Zutphen slew 
In the starred zenith of his knightly fame. 
There too a dark-stoled figure I did meet: 
Herbert, whose faith burned true 
And steadfast as the altar candle's flame. 

Under the Wilton cedars, pondering 
Upon the pains of Beauty and the wrong 
That sealeth lovely lips, fated to sing. 
Before they reach the cadence of their song, 

22 



I mused upon dead poets : mighty ones 

Who sang and suffered: briefly heard were they 

As Lybyan nightingales weary of wing 

Fleeing the temper of Saharan suns 

To gladden our moon'd May, 

And with the broken blossom vanishing. 

So to my eyes a sorrowful vision came 

Of one whose name was writ in water : bright 

His cheeks and eyes burned with a hectic flame; 

And one, alas ! I saw whose passionate might 

Was spent upon a fevered fen in Greece; 

One shade there was who, starving, choked with bread; 

One, a drown'd corpse, through stormy water slips; 

One in the numbing poppy-juice found peace; 

And one, a youth, lay dead 

With powdered arsenic upon his lips. 

O bitter were the sorrow that could dull 
The sombre music of slow evening 
Here, where the old world is so beautiful 
That even lesser lips are moved to sing 

23 



How the wide heron sails into the light 
Black as the cedarn shadows on the lawns 
Or stricken woodlands patient in decay, 
And river water murmurs through the night 
Until autumnal dawns 
Burn in the glass of Nadder's watery way. 

Nay, these were they by whom the world was lost, 
To whom the world most richly gave : forlorn 
Beauty they worshipped, counting not the cost 
If of their torment beauty might be born ; 
And life, the splendid flower of their delight. 
Loving too eagerly, they broke, and spilPd 
The perfume that the folded petals close 
Before its prime; yet their frail fingers white 
From that bruised bloom distill'd 
Uttermost attar of the living rose. 

Wherefore, O shining ones, I will not mourn 
You, who have ravish'd beauty's secret ways 
Beneath death's impotent shadow, suffering scorn. 
Hatred, and desolation in her praise. . . . 
24 



Thus as I spoke their phantom faces smiled, 

As brooding night with heavy downward wing 

Fell upon Wilton's elegiac stone, 

On the dark woodlands and the waters wild 

And every living thing — 

Leaving me there amazed and alone. 



25 



Porton Water 

Through Porton village, under the bridge, 
A clear bourne floweth, with grasses trailing, 
Wherein are shadows of white clouds sailing, 

And elms that shelter under the ridge. 

Through Porton village we passed one day, 
Marching the plain for mile on mile, 
And crossed the bridge in single file, 

Happily singing, and marched away 

Over the bridge where the shallow races, 
Under a clear and frosty sky: 
And the winterbourne, as we marched by, 

Mirrored a thousand laughing faces. 

O, do we trouble you, Porton river. 
We who laughing passed, and after 
Found a resting-place for laughter? 
Over here, where the poplars shiver 
26 



By stagnant waters, we lie rotten. 
On windless nights, in the lonely places, 
There, where the winter water races, 

O, Porton river, are we forgotten? 

Through Porton village, under the bridge, 
The clear bourne floweth with grasses trailing, 
Wherein are shadows of light cloud sailing. 

And elms that shelter under the ridge. 

The pale moon she comes and looks; 

Over the lonely spire she climbs; 

For there she is lovelier many times 
Than in the little broken brooks. 



27 



An Old House 

No one lives in the old house ; long ago 
The voices of men and women left it lonely. 

They shuttered the sightless windows in a row, 
Imprisoning empty darkness — darkness only. 

Beyond the garden-closes, with sudden thunder 
The lumbering troop-train passing clanks and 

jangles; 

And I, a stranger, peer with careless wonder 
Into the thickets of the garden tangles. 

Yet, as I pass, a transient vision dawns 

Ghostly upon my pondering spirit's gloom, 

Of grey lavender bushes and weedy lawns 
And a solitary cherry-tree in bloom. . . . 

No one lives in the old house: year by year 
The plaster crumbles on the lonely walls: 

The apple falls in the lush grass; the pear, 
Pulpy with ripeness, on the pathway falls. 

28 



Yet this the garden was, where, on spring nights 
Under the cherry-blossom, lovers plighted 

Have wondered at the moony billows white, 

Dreaming uncountable springs by love delighted; 

Whose ears have heard the blackbird's jolly whistle, 
The shadowy cries of bats in twilight flitting 

Zigzag beneath the eaves; or, on the thistle. 

The twitter of autumn birds swinging and sitting; 

Whose eyes, on winter evenings, slow returning 
Saw on the frosted paths pale lamplight fall 

Streaming, or, on the hearth, red embers burning, 
And shadows of children playing in the hall. 

Where have they gone, lovers of another day? 

(No one lives in the old house; long ago 
They shuttered the sightless windows. . . .) Where are 

they, 
Whose eyes delighted in this moony snow? 

29 



I cannot tell . . . and little enough they care, 
Though April spray the cherry-boughs with light, 

And autumn pile her harvest unaware 
Under the walls that echoed their delight. 

I cannot tell ... yet I am as those lovers; 

For me, who pass on my predestinate way, 
The prodigal blossom billows and recovers 

In ghostly gardens a hundred miles away. 

Yet, in my heart, a melancholy rapture 

Tells me that eyes, which now an iron haste 

Hurries to iron days, may here recapture 
A vision of ancient loveliness gone to v/aste. 



30 



The Dhows 

South of Guardafui with a dark tide flowing 
We hailed two ships with tattered canvas bent to the 

monsoon, 
Hung betwixt the outer sea and pale surf showing 
Where dead cities of Lybia lay bleaching in the moon. 

*0h whither be ye sailing with torn sails broken?' 
'We sail, we sail for Sheba, at Suliman's behest, 
With carven silver phalli for the ebony maids of Ophir 
From brown-skinned baharias of Arabia the Blest.' 

'Oh whither be ye sailing, with your dark flag flying?' 

'We sail, with creaking cedar, towards the Northern 

Star. 

The helmsman singeth wearily, and in our hold are 

lying 

A hundred slaves in shackles from the marts of Zanzi- 
bar.' 

31 



'Oh whither be ye sailing . . . ?' 

'Alas, we sail no longer: 
Our hulls arc wrack, our sails are dust, as any man 

might know. 
And why should you torment us? . . . Your iron keels 

are stronger 
Than ghostly ships that sailed from Tyre a thousand 

years ago.* 



32 



The Gift 

Marching on Tanga, marching the parchM plain 
Of wavering spear-grass past Pangani River, 
England came to me — me who had ahvays taxn 
But never given before — England, the giver, 
In a vision of three poplar-trees that shiver 
On still evenings of summer, after rain, 
By Slapton Ley, where reed-beds start and quiver 
When scarce a ripple moves the upland grain. 
Then I thanked God that now I had suffered pain, 
And, as the parch'd plain, thirst, and lain awake 
Shivering all night through till cold daybreak: 
In that I count these sufferings my gain 
And her acknowledgment. Nay, more, would fain 
Suffer as many more for her sweet sake. 



33 



Five Degrees South 

I LOVE all waves and lovely water in motion, 
That wavering iris in comb of the blown spray: 
Iris of tumbled nautilus in the wake's commotion, 
Their spread sails dipped in a marmoreal way 
Unquarried, wherein are greeny bubbles blowing 
Plumes of faint spray, cool in the deep 
And lucent seas, that pause not in their flowing 
To lap the southern starlight while they sleep. 
These I have seen, these I have loved and known : 
I have seen Jupiter, that great star, swinging 
Like a ship's lantern, silent and alone 
Within his sea of sky, and heard the singing 
Of the south trade, that siren of the air. 
Who shivers the taut shrouds, and singeth there. 



34 



104'° Fahrenheit 

To-night I lay with fever in my veins 
Consumed, tormented creature of fire and ice, 
And, weaving the enhavock'd brain^s device, 
Dreamed that for evermore I must walk these plains 
Where sunlight slayeth life, and where no rains 
Abated the fierce air, nor slaked its fire : 
So that death seemed the end of all desire, 
To ease the distracted body of its pains. 
And so I died, and from my eyes the glare 
Faded, nor had I further need of breath; 
But when I reached my hand to find you there 
Beside me, I found nothing. . . . Lonely was death, 
And with a cry I wakenecJ, but to hear 
Thin wings of fever singing in my ear. 



35 



Fever-Trees 

The beautiful Acacia 
She sighs in desert lands: 
Over the burning waterways 
Of Africa she sways and sways, 
Even where no air glideth 
In cooling green she stands. 

The beautiful Acacia 

She hath a yellow dress : 

A slender trunk of lemon sheen 

Gleameth through the tender green 

(Where the thorn hideth) 

Shielding her loveliness. 

The beautiful Acacia 

Dwelleth in deadly lands : 

Over the brooding waterways 

Where death breedeth, she sways and sways, 

And no man long abideth 

In valleys where she stands. 

36 



The Rain-Bird 

High on the tufted baobab-tree 
To-night a rain-bird sang to me 
A simple song, of three notes only, 
That made the wilderness more lonely; 

For in my brain it echoed nearly, 
Old village church bells chiming clearly: 
The sweet cracked bells, just out of tune, 
Over the mowing grass in June — 

Over the mowing grass, and meadows 
Where the low sun casts long shadows, 
And cuckoos call in the twilight 
From elm to elm, in level flight. 

Now through the evening meadows move 
Slow couples of young folk in love, 
Who pause at every crooked stile 
And kiss in the hawthorn's shade the while : 



37 



Like pale moths the summer frocks 
Hover between the beds of phlox, 
And old men, feeling it is late, 
Cease their gossip at the gate, 

Till deeper still the twilight grows. 
And night blossometh, like a rose 
Full of love and sweet perfume, 
Whose heart most tender stars illume. 

Here the red sun sank like lead, 
And the sky blackened overhead; 
Only the locust chirped at me 
From the shadowy baobab-tree. 



38 



Moths 



When I lay wakeful yesternight 

My fever's flame was a clear light, 

A taper, flaring in the wind, 

Whither, fluttering out of the dim 

Night, many dreams glimmered by. 

Like moths, out of the darkness, blind, 

Hurling at that taper's flame. 

From drinking honey of the night's flowers 

Into my circled light they came : 

So near I could see their soft colours, 

Grey of the dove, most soothely grey; 

But my heat singed their wings, and away 

Darting into the dark again. 

They escaped me. . . . 

Others floated down 
Like those vaned seeds that fall 
In autumn from the sycamore's crown 



39 



When no leaf trcmbleth nor branch is stirred, 

More silent in flight than any bird, 

Or bat's wings flitting in darkness, soft 

As lizards moving on a white wall 

They came quietly from aloft 

Down through my circle of light, and so 

Into unlighted gloom below. 

But one dream, strong-winged, daring 

Flew beating at the heart of the flame 

Till I feared it would have put out my light, 

My thin taper, fitfully flaring, 

And that I should be left alone in the night 

With no more dreams for my delight. 

Can it be that from the dead 

Even their dreams, their dreams are fled? 



40 



Bete Humaine 

Riding* through Ruwu swamp, about sunrise, 

I saw the world awake; and as the ray 

Touched the tall grasses where they dream till day, 

Lo, the bright air alive with dragonflies, 

With brittle wings aquiver, and great eyes 

Piloting crimson bodies, slender and gay. 

I aimed at one, and struck it, and it lay 

Broken and lifeless, with fast-fading dyes . . . 

Then my soul sickened with a sudden pain 

And horror, at my own careless cruelty, 

That where all things arc cruel I had slain 

A creature whose sweet life it is to fly: 

Like beasts that prey with bloody cla\^ . . . Nay, they 

Must slay to live, but what excuse had I ? 



41 



Doves 



On the edge of the wild-wood 

Grey doves fluttering: 

Grey doves of Astarte 

To the woods at daybreak 

Lazily uttering 

Their murmured enchantment, 

Old as man's childhood ; 

While she, pale divinity 
Of hidden evil, 
Silvers the regions chaste 
Of cold sky, and broodeth 
Over forests primeval 
And all that thorny waste's 
Wooded infinity. 

'Lovely goddess#of groves/ 
Cried I, 'what enchanted 



4^ 



Sinister recesses 
Of these lone shades 
May still be haunted 
By thy demon caresses, 
Thy unholy loves?* 

But clear day quelleth 
Her dominion lonely, 
And the soft ring-dove, 
Murmuring, telleth 
That dark sin only 
From man's lust springeth, 
In man's heart dwelleth. 



43 



Song 



I MADE a song in my love's likeness 

From colours of my quietude, 
From trees whose blossoms shine no less 

Than butterflies in the wild-wood. 

I laid claim on all beauty 

Under the sun to praise her wonder, 
Till the noise of war swept over me, 

Stopped my singing mouth with thunder. 

The angel of death hath swift wings, 
I heard him strip the huddled trees 

Overhead, as a hornet sings, 
And whip the grass about my knees. 

Down we crouched in the parched dust, 
Down beneath that deadly rain : 

Dead still I lay, as lie one must 
Who hath a bullet in his brain. 



44 



Dead they left me : but my soul, waking, 
Quietly laughed at their distress 

Who guessed not that I still was making 
That new song in my love's likeness. 



45 



Before Action 



Now the wind of the dawn sighs, 
Now red embers have burned white, 

Under the darkness faints and dies 
The slow-beating heart of night. 

Into the darkness my eyes peer 

Seeing only faces steel'd, 
And level eyes that know not fear; 

Yet each heart is a battlefield 

Where phantom armies foin and feint 
And bloody victories are won 

From the time when stars are faint 
To the rising of the sun. 

With banners broken, and the roll 
Of drums, at dawn the phantoms fly: 

A man must commune with his soul 
When he marches out to die. 



46 



O day of wrath and of desire! 

For each may know upon this day 
Whether he be a thing of fire 

Or fettered to the traitor clay. 

Such is the hazard that is thrown : 
We know not how the dice may fall : 

All the secrets shall be known 
Or else we shall not know at all. 



47 



On a Subaltern Killed in Action 

Into that dry and most desolate place 

With heavy gait they dragged the stretcher in 

And laid him on the bloody ground : the din 

Of Maxim fire ceased not. I raised his head, 

And looked into his face, 

And saw that he was dead. 

Saw beneath matted curls the broken skin 

That let the bullet in; 

And saw the limp, lithe limbs, the smiling mouth . . . 

(Ah, may we smile at death 

As bravely. . . .) the curv'd lips that no more drouth 

Should blacken, and no sweetly stirring breath 

Mildly displace. 

So I covered the calm face 

And stripped the shirt from his firm breast, and there; 

A zinc identity disc, a bracelet of elephant hair 

48 



I found. . . . Ah, God, how deep it stings 
This unendurable pity of small things! 

But more than this I saw, 

That dead stranger welcoming, more than the raw 
And brutal havoc of war. 
England I saw, the mother from whose side 
He came hither and died, she at whose hems he had 

play'd, 
In whose quiet womb his body and soul were made. 

That pale, estranged flesh that we bowed over 

Had breathed the scent in summer of white clover; 

Dreamed her cool fading nights, her twilights long, 

And days as careless as a blackbird's song 

Heard in the hush of eve, when midges' wings 

Make a thin music, and the night-jar spins. 

(For it is summer, I thought, in England now. . . .) 

And once those forward gazing eyes had seen 

Her lovely living green : that blackened brow 

Cool airs, from those blue hills moving, had f ann'd — 

Breath of that holy land 

49 



Whither my soul aspireth without despair: 
In the broken brain had many a lovely word 
Awakened magical echoes of things heard 
Telling of love and laughter and low voices, 
And tales in which the English heart rejoices 
In vanishing visions of childhood and its glories : 
Old-fashioned nursery rhymes and fairy stories: 
Words that only an English tongue could tell. 

And the firing died away; and the night fell 
On our battle. Only in the sullen sky 
A prairie fire, with huge fantastic flame 
Leapt, lighting dark clouds charged with thunder* 
And my heart was sick with shame 
That there in death, he should lie. 
Crying: *0h, why am I alive, I wonder?' 

In a dream I saw War riding the land : 
Stark rode she, with bowed eyes, against the glare 
Of sack'd cities smouldering in the dark, 
A tired horse, lean, with outreaching head, 

50 



And hid her face of dread. . . . 

Yet, in my passion would I look on her, 

Crying, O hark, 

Thou pale one, whom now men say bearest the scythe 

Of God, that iron scythe forged by his thunder 

For reaping of nations overripened, fashioned 

Upon the clanging anvil whose sparks, flying 

In a starry night, dying, fall hereunder. . . . 

But she, she heeded not my cry impassioned 

Nor turned her face of dread, 

Urging the tired horse, with outreaching head, 

O thou, cried I, who choosest for thy going 

These bloomy meadows of youth, these flowery ways 

Whereby no influence strays 

Ruder than a cold wind blowing. 

Or beating needles of rain. 

Why must thou ride again 

Ruthless among the pastures yet unripcned, 

Crushing their beauty in thine iron track 

Downtrodden, ravish'd in thy following flame. 

Parched and black? 

But she, she stayed not in her weary haste 

SI 



Nor turned her face ; but fled : 

And where she passed the lands lay waste. . . • 

And now I cannot tell whither she rideth : 

But tired, tired rides she. 

Yet know I well why her dread face she hideth : 

She is pale and faint to death. Yea, her day faileth, 

Nor all her blood, nor all her frenzy burning, 

Nor all her hate availeth : 

For she passeth out of sight 

Into that night 

From which none, none returneth 

To waste the meadows of youth, 

Nor vex thine eyelids, Routhe, 

O sorrowful sister, soother of our sorrow. 

And a hope within me springs 

That fair will be the morrow, 

And that charred ^lain, 

Those flowery meadows, shall rejoice at last 

In a sweet, clean 

Freshness, as when the green 

Grass springeth, where the prairie fire hath passed. 

52 



After Action 

All through that day of battle the broken sound 

Of shattering Maxim fire made mad the wood ; 

So that the low trees shuddered where they stood, 

And echoes bellowed in the bush around : 

But when, at last the light of day was drowned, 

That madness ceased. . . . Ah, God, but it was good! 

There, in the reek of iodine and blood, 

I flung me down upon the thorny ground. 

So quiet was it, I might well have been lying 

In a room I love, where the ivy cluster shakes 

Its dew upon the lattice panes at even: 

Where rusty ivory scatters from the dying 

Jessamine blossom, and the musk-rose breaks 

Her dusky bloom beneath a summer heaven. 



53 



Sonneif 

Not only for remembered loveliness, 

England, my mother, my own, we hold thee rare 

Who toil, and fight, and sicken beneath the glare 

Of brazen skies that smile on our duress, 

Making us crave thy cloudy state no less 

Than the sweet clarity of thy rain-wash'd air, 

Meadows in moonlight cool, and every fair 

Slow-fading flower of thy summer dress : 

3Srot for thy flowers, but for the unfading crov/n 

Of sacrifice our happy brothers wove thee : 

The joyous ones who laid thy beauty down 

Nor stayed to see it shamed. For these we love thee. 

For this (O love, O dread!) we hold thee more 

Divinely fair to-day than heretofore. 



54 



A Farewell to Africa 

Now once again, upon the pole-star's bearing, 
We plough these furrowed fields where no blade 

springeth; 
Again the busy trade in the halyards singeth 
Sun-whitened spindrift from the blown wave shearing; 
The uncomplaining sea suffers our faring; 
In a brazen glitter our little wake is lost, 
And the starry south rolls over until no ghost 
Remaineth of us and all our pitiful daring; 
For the sea beareth no trace of man's endeavour, 
His might enarmoured, his prosperous argosies. 
Soundless, within her unsounded caves, forever 
She broodeth, knowing neither war nor peace. 
And our grey cruisers holds in mind no more 
Than the cedarn fleets that Sheba's treasure bore. 



55 



Song 



What is the worth of war 

In a world that turneth, turneth 

About a tired star 

Whose flaming centre burneth 

No longer than the space 

Of the spent atom's race : 

Where conquered lands, soon, soon 

Lie waste as the pale moon? 

What is the worth of art 
In a world that fast forgetteth 
Those who have wrung its heart 
With beauty that love begetteth, 
Whose faint flames vanish quite 
In that star-powdered night 
Where even the mighty ones 
Shine only as far suns? 



S6 



And what is beauty worth, 
Sweet beauty, that persuadeth 
Of her immortal birth. 
Then, as a flower, f adeth : 
Or love, whose tender years 
End with the mourner's tears, 
Die, when the mourner's breath 
Is quiet, at last, in death? 

Beauty and love are one. 
Even when fierce war clashes: 
Even when our fiery sun 
Hath burnt itself to ashes, 
And the dead planets race 
Unlighted through blind space, 
Beauty will still shine there : 
Wherefore, I worship her. 



57 



The Hawthorn Spray 

I SAW a thrush light on a hawthorn spray, 
One moment only, spilling creamy blossom, 
While the bough bent beneath her speckled bosom, 
Bent, and recovered, and she fluttered away. 

The branch was still ; but, in my heart, a pain 
Than the thornM spray more cruel, stabbed me, only 
Remembering days in a far land and lonely 
When I had never hoped for summer again. 



S8 



The Pavement 

In bitter London's heart of stone, 
Under the lamplight's shielded glare, 

I saw a soldier's body thrown 
Unto the drabs that traffic there 

Pacing the pavements with slow feet: 
Those old pavements whose blown dust 

Throttles the hot air of the street, 
And the darkness smells of lust. 

The chaste moon, with equal glance, 
Looked down on the mad world, astare 

At those who conquered in sad France 

And those who perished in Leicester Square. 

And in her light his lips were pale: 

Lips that love had moulded well : 
Out of the jaws of Passchendaele 

They had sent him to this nether hell. 

59 



I had no stone of scorn to fling, 

For I know not how the wrong began — 
But I had seen a hateful thing 

Masked in the dignity of man : 

And hate and sorrow and hopeless anger 
Swept my heart, as the winds that sweep 

Angrily through the leafless hanger 
When winter rises from the deep. , -^ i 



I would that war were what men dream: 
A crackling fire, a cleansing flame, 

That it might leap the space between 
And lap up London and its shame. 



60 



To Lydia Lopokova 

HER GARLAND 

O THOU who comest to our wintry shade 
Gay and light-footed as the virgin Spring, 
Before whose shining feet the cherries fling 
Their moony tribute, when the sloe is sprayed 
With light, and all things musical are made : 

thou who art Spring's daughter, who can bring 
Blossom, or song of bird, or anything 

To match the youth in which you stand arrayed? 
Not that rich garland Meleager twined 
In his sun-guarded glade above the blue 
That flashes from the burning Tyrian seas : 
No, you are cooler, sweeter than the wind 
That wakes our woodlands; so I bring to you 
These wind-blown blossoms of anemones. 

HER VARIETY 

Soft as a pale moth flitting in moonshine 

1 saw thee flutter to the shadowy call 

6i 



That beckons from the strings of Carneval, 
O frail and fragrant image of Columbine : 
So, when the spectre of the rose was thine, 
A flower wert thou, and last I saw thee fall 
In Cleopatra's stormy bacchanal 
Flown with the red insurgence of the vine. 

moth, O flower, O maenad, which art thou? 
Shadowy, beautiful, or leaping wild 

As stormlight over savage Tartar skies? 
Such were my ancient questionings; but now 

1 know that you are nothing but a child 
With a red flower's mouth and hazel eyes. 

HER SWIFTNESS 

You are too swift for poetry, too fleet 
For any mused numbers to ensnare: 
Swifter than music dying on the air 
Or bloom upon rose-petals, fades the sweet 
Vanishing magic of your flying feet, 
Your poised finger, and your shining hair: 
Words cannot tell how wonderful you were, 
62 



Or how one gesture made a joy complete. 

And since you know my pen may never capture 

The transient swift loveliness of you, 

Come, let us salve our sense of the world^s loss 

Remembering, with a melancholy rapture. 

How many dancing-girls . . . and poets too . . • 

Dream in the dust of Hecatompylos. 



63 



Ghostly Loves 

*0h why,' my darling prayeth me, 'must you sing 
For ever of ghostly loves, phantasmal passion? 
Seeing that you never loved me after that fashion 
And the love I gave was not a phantom thing, 
But delight of eager lips and strong arms folding 
The beauty of yielding arms and of smooth shoulder, 
All fluent grace of which you were the moulder: 
And I. . . . Oh, I was happy for your holding.' 
*Ah, do you not know, my dearest, have you not seen 
The shadow that broodeth over things that perish: 
How age may mock sweet moments that have been 
And death defile the beauty that we cherish? 
Wherefore, sweet spirit, I thank thee for thy giving: 
'Tis my spirit that embraceth thee dead or living.' 



64 



February 



The robin on my lawn, 
He was the first to tell 
How, in the frozen dawn, 
This miracle befell, 
Waking the meadows white 
With hoar, the iron road 
Agleam with splintered light. 
And ice where water flowed : 
Till, when the low sun drank 
Those milky mists that cloak 
Hanger and hollied bank. 
The winter world awoke 
To hear the feeble bleat 
Of lambs on downland farms : 
A blackbird whistled sweet; 
Old beeches moved their arms 



65 



Into a mellow haze 
Aerial, newly-born : 
And I, alone, agaze, 
Stood waiting for the thorn 
To break in blossom white 
Or burst in a green flame. . . 
So, in a single night, 
Fair February came. 
Bidding my lips to sing 
Or whisper their surprise, 
With all the joy of spring 
And morning in her eyes. 



e^ 



Song of the Dark Ages 

We digged our trenches on the down 
Beside old barrows, and the wet 

White chalk we shovelled from below; 

It lay like drifts of thawing snow 
On parados and parapet: 

Until a pick neither struck flint 

Nor split the yielding chalky soil, 
But only calcined human bone: 
Poor relic of that Age of Stone 
Whose ossuary was our spoil. 

Home we marched singing in the rain, 
And all the while, beneath our song, 
I mused how many springs should w^ane 
And still our trenches scar the plain: 
The monument of an old wrong. 



Si 



But then, I thought, the fair green sod 
Will wholly cover that white stain, 
And soften, as it clothes the face 
Of those old barrows, every trace 
Of violence to the patient plain. 

And careless people, passing by, 

Will speak of both in casual tone: 
Saying: ^You see the toil they made: 
The age of iron, pick, and spade, 
Here jostles with the Age of Stone.' 

Yet either from that happier race 
Will merit but a passing glance; 
And they will leave us both alone : 
Poor savages who wrought in stone — 
Poor savages who fought in France. 



68 



Winter Sunset 

Athwart the blackening bars of pines benighted, 
The sun, descending to the zones of denser 
Cloud that overhung the long horizon, lighted 
Upon the crown of earth a flaming censer 
From which white clouds of incense, overflowing, 
Filled the chill clarity from whence the swallows 
Had lately fled with wreathed vapours, showing 
Like a fine bloom over the lonely fallows: 
Where, with the pungent breath of mist was blended 
A faint aroma of pine-needles sodden 
By autumn rains, and fainter still, ascended 
Beneath high woods the scent of leaves downtrodden. 
It was a moment when the earth, that sickened 
For Spring, as lover when the beloved lingers. 
Lay breathless, while the distant goddess quickened 
Some southern hill-side with her glowing fingers: 
And so, it seemed, the drowsy lands were shaken, 
Stirred in their sleep, and sighed, as though the pain 
Of a strange dream had bidden them awaken 
To frozen days and bitter nights again. 

69 



Song 



Why have you stolen my delight 
In all the golden shows of Spring 

When every cherry-tree is white 
And in the limes the thrushes sing, 

O fickler than the April day, 

O brighter than the golden broom, 

O blyther than the thrushes' lay, 
O whiter than the cherry-bloom, 

O sweeter than all things that blow . • 
Why have you only left for me 

The broom, the cherry's crown of snow, 
And thrushes in the linden-tree? 



70 



England — April, 1918 

Last night the North flew at the throat of Spring 
With spite to tear her greening banners down, 
Tossing the elm-tree's tender tassels brown, 
The virgin blossom of sloe burdening 
With colder snow; beneath his frosty sting 
Patient, the newly-wakened woods were bowed 
By drowned fields where stormy waters flowed: 
Yet, on the thorn, I heard a blackbird sing. . . . 
Too late, too late,' he sang, ^this wintry spite; 
For molten snow will feed the springing grass : 
The tide of life, it floweth with the year.' 
O England, England, thou that standest upright 
Against the tide of death, the bad days pass : 
Know, by this miracle, that summer is near. 



71 



Slender Themes 

When, by a happier race, these leaves are turned, 
They'll wonder that such quiet themes engaged 
A soldier's mind when noisy wars were waged, 
And half the world in one red bonfire burned. 
When that fierce age,' they'll say, Vent up in flame 
He lived ... or died, seeing those bright deeds done 
Whereby our sweet and settled peace was won. 
Yet ofiFereth slender dreams, not deeds, to Fame,' 
Then say: ^Out of the heart the mouth speaketh, 
And mine was as the hearts of other men 
Whom those dark days impassioned; yet it seeketh 
To paint the sombre woes that held us then. 
No more than the cloud-rending levin's light 
Seeks to illumine the sad skies of night.' 



72 



Invocation 

Whither, O, my sweet mistress, must I follow thee? 

For when I hear thy distant footfall nearing, 

And wait on thy appearing, 
Lo! my lips are silent: no words come to me. 

Once I waylaid thee in green forest covers, 

Hoping that spring might free my lips with gentle 

fingers; 
Alas! her presence lingers 
No longer than on the plain the shadow of brown 

kestrel hovers. 

Through windless ways of the night my spirit followed 

after; — - 

Cold and remote were they, and there, possessed 

By a strange unworldly rest. 
Awaiting thy still voice heard only starry laughter. 

73 



The pillared halls of sleep echoed my ghostly tread. 

Yet when their secret chambers I essayed 

My spirit sank, dismayed, 
Waking in fear to find the new-born vision fled. 

Once indeed — but then my spirit bloomed in leafy rap- 
ture — 

I loved ; and once I looked death in the eyes : 

So, suddenly made wise, 
Spoke of such beauty as I may never recapture. . . . 

Whither, O, divine mistress, must I then follow thee? 

Is it only in love . . . say, is it only in death 

That the spirit blossometh, 
And words that may match my vision shall come to me? 



74 



Thamar 

{To Thamar Karsavina) 

Once in the sombre light of the thronged courts of 

night, 
In a dream-haunted land only inhabited 
By the unhappy dead, came one who, anxious eyed, 
Clung to my idle hand with clenched fingers weak 
And gazed into my eyes as he had wrongs to speak. 
Silent he stood and wan, more pallid than the leaves 
Of an aspen blown under a wind that grieves. 
Then I : ^O haggard one, say from what ghostly zone 
Of thwarted destinies or torment hast thou come? 
Tell me thy race and name V And he, with veiled face : 
^I have neither name nor race, but I have travelled far, 
A timeless avatar of never-ending dooms. 
Out of those tyrannous glooms where, like a tired star 

75 



In stormy darkness, looms the castle of Thamar . . . 
Once in a lonely dawn my eager spirit fared 
By ways that no men dared unto a desert land, 
Where, on a sullen strand, a mouldering city, vast 
As towered Babylon, stood in the dreamy sand — 
Older a million years: Babel was builded on 
That broken city's tears; dust of her crumbled past 
Rose from the rapid wheels of Babel's charioteers 
In whorled clouds above those shining thoroughfares 
Where Babel's millions tread on her unheeding dead. 
Forth from an eastern gate where the lips of Asia v/ait 
Parch'd with an ancient thirst that no aeons can abate, 
Passed I, predestinate, to a thorn'd desert's drought. 
Where the rivers of the south, flowing in a cloudy spate, 
Spend at last their splendid strength in a sea of molten 

glass 
Seething with the brazen might of a white sun dipped 

at length 
Like a baked stone, burning hot, plunged in a hissing 

pot. 
Out of that solemn portal over the tawny waste, 
Without stay, without haste, nor the joy of any mortal 

76 



Glance of eye or clasp of hand, desolate, in a burning 

land, 
Lonely days and nights I travelled and the changing 

seasons squandered 
Friendless, endlessly, I wandered nor my woven fate 

unravelled; 
Draw^n to a hidden goal, sore, forlorn with waiting. 
Seeking I knew not what, yet unhesitating 
Struggled my hapless soul . . . 

There, in a thousand springs, 
Slow, beneath frozen snow, where the blind earth lay 

cringing, 
Have I seen the steppe unfold uncounted blossomings. 
Where salty pools shone fair in a quivering blue air 
That shivered every fringing reed-bed with cool de- 
light, 
And fanned the mazy flight of slow-wing'd egrets white 
Beating and wheeling bright against the sun astare; 
But I could not hear their wings for they w^ere ghostly 

things 
Sent by the powers of night to mock my sufferings 
And rain upon the bitter waterpools their drops aglitter. 

n 



Yet, when these lakes accursed tortured my aching 

thirst, 
The green reeds fell to dust, the cool pools to a crust 
Of frozen salt crystallised to taunt my broken lips, 
To cheat my staring eyes, as a vision of great ships 
With moving towers of sail, poops throng'd with grin- 
ning crowds 
And a wind in their shrouds, bears down upon the pale 
Wasted castaway afloat with the salt in his throat 
And a feeble wild desire to be quenched of his fire 
In the green gloom beneath. 

So, again and again, 
Hath a phantom city thrust to the visionary vault 
Of inviolate cobalt, dome and dreaming minaret 
Mosque and gleaming water-tower hazy in a fountain's 

jet 
Or a market's rising dust; and my lips have cried aloud 
To see them tremble there, though I knew within my 

heart 
They were chiselled out of cloud or carven of thin air; 
And my fingers clenched my hand, for I wondered if 

this land 

78 



Of my stony pilgrimage were a glimmering mirage, 
And I myself no more than a phantom of the sand. 
'But beyond these fading slender cities, many leagues 

away, 
Strange brooding mountains lay heaped, crowding 

range on range 
In a changing cloudy splendour; and beyond, in lakes 

of light, 
As eastward still I staggered, there swam into my sight, 
More vast and hoar and haggard, shoulders of ice and 

snow 
Bounding the heavens low of burnished brass, where- 

under 
The hot plains of Cathay perpetually slumber: 
Where tawny millions breed in cities without number, 
Whither, a hill-born thunder, rolling on Tartary 
With torrents and barb'd lightning, swelleth the yellow 

river 
To a tumult of whitening foam and confused might 
That drowns in a single night many a mud-made city; 
And cities of boats, and frail cities of lath and reed. 
Are whirled away without pity or set afloat in a pale, 

79 



Swirling, shallow sea . . . and their names seem lost 

for ever 
Till a stranger nomad race drive their herds to the sad 

place 
Where old sorrows lie forgotten, and raise upon the 

rotten 
Level waste another brood to await another flood. 

^But I never might attain to this melancholy plain 
For the mountains rose between; stark in my path they 

lay 
Between me and Cathay, through moving mist half- 
seen. 
And I knew that they were real, for their drooping 

folds of cloud 
Enwrapped me in a shroud, and the air that fell at 

night 
From their frozen summits vv^hite slid like an ice-blue 

steel 
Into my living breast and stilled the heart within 
As the chill of an old sin that robs a man of rest, 
Killing all delight in the silence of the night 
And brooding black above till the heart dare not move 

80 



But lieth cold and numb . . . and the dawn will not 

come. 

*Yet to me a dawn came, new-kindled in cold flame, 

Flinging the imminence of those inviolate snows 

On the forest lawns below in a shadow more immense 

Than their eternal vastness; and a new hope beyond 

reason, 
Flamed in my heart's dark season, dazzled my pallid 

eyes, 
Till, when the hot sun soared above the uttermost 

height, 
A draught of keen delight into my body was poured, 
For all that frozen fastness lay flowered with the 

spring: 
Her starry blossoms broke beneath my bruised feet, 
And their beauty was so sweet to me I kissed them 

where they lay; 
Yea, I bent my weary hips and kissed them with dry 

lips, 
Tenderly, only dreading lest their petals delicate 
Should be broken by my treading, for I lived, I lived 

again, 
8i 



And my heart would have been broken by a living 

creature's pain, 
So I kissed them for a token of my joy in their new 

birth, 
And I kissed the gentle earth. Slowly the shadows 

crept 
To the bases of the crags, and I slept. . . . 

'Once, in another life, had I remembered sleep, 
When tired children creep on to their mother's knees, 
And there a dreamless peace more quietly descendeth 
Than gentle evening endeth or ring-doves fold their 

wings, 
Before the night-jar spins or the nightingale begins; 
When the brooding hedgerow trees where they nest lie 

awake 
And breathe so soft they shake not a single shuddering 

leaf 
Lest the silence should break. 

'Other sleep have I known, 
Deeper, beyond belief, when straining limbs relax 
After hot human toil in yellow harvest fields 
Where the panting earth yields a smell of baked soil, 
82 



And the dust of dry stubbles blows over the whitening 
Shocks of lank grain and bundles of flax, 
And men fling themselves down forgetting their 

troubles, 
Unheedful of the song that the landrail weaves along 
Misty woodlands, or lightning that the pale sky laves 
Like phosphorescent waves washing summer seas : 
And, more beautiful than these, that sleep of dazed 

wonder 
When love has torn asunder the veils of the sky 
And raptured lovers lie faint in each other's arms 
Beneath a heaven strewn with myriad starry swarms, 
Where planets float like lonely gold-flowered nenuphars 
In pools of the sky; yet, when they wake, they turn 
From those burning galaxies seeking heaven only 
In each other's eyes, and sigh, and sleep again; 
For while they sleep they seem to forget the world's 

pain, 
And when they wake, they dream. . . . 

'But other sleep was mine 
As I had drunk of wine with bitter hemlock steep'd. 
Or soused with the heaped milky poppyheads 

83 



A drowsy Tartar treads where slow waters sweep 
Over red river beds, and the air is heavy with sleep. 
So, when I woke at last, the labouring earth had rolled 
Eastward under the vast dominion of night, 
Funereal, forlorn as that unlighted chamber 
Wherein she first w^as born, bereft of all starlight, 
Pale silver of the moon, or the low sun's amber. 

'Then to my queen I prayed, grave Ashtoreth, whose 

shade 
Hallows the dim abyss of Heliopolis, 
Where many an olive maid clashed kissing Syrian 

cymbals, 
And silver-sounding timbrels shivered through the vale. 
O lovely, and O white, under the holy night 
Is their gleaming wonder, and their brows are pale 
As the new risen moon, dancing till they swoon 
In far forests under desolate Lebanon, 
While the flame of Moloch's pyre reddens the sea-born 

cloud 
That overshadows Tyre; so, when I cried aloud. 
Behold, a torch of fire leapt on the mountain-side! 

*0 bright, O beautiful! for never kindlier light 

84 



Fell on the darkened sight of mortal eyes and dull 
Since that devoted one, whom gloomy Caucasus 
In icy silence lonely bound to his cruel shoulders, 
Brought to benighted men in*a hollow fennel-stem 
Sparks of the torrid vapour that burned behind the bars 
Of evening, broke dawn's rose, or smouldered in the 

stars. 
Or lit the glowworm's taper, or wavered over the fen, 
Or tipped the javelin of the far-ravening levin, 
Lash of the Lord of Heaven and bitter scourge of sin. 

beautiful, O bright! my tired sinews strained 

To this torch that flared and waned as a watery planet 

gloweth 
And waneth in the night when a calm sea floweth 
Under a misty sky spread with the tattered veils 
Of rapid cloud driven over the deeps of heaven 
By wings that range too high to sweep the languid sails. 
On through the frozen night, like a blind moth flying 
With battered wing and bruised bloom into a lighty 

1 dragged my ragged limbs, cared not if I were dying, 
Knew not if I were dead, where cavernous crevasses, 
And stony desperate passes snared, waylaid my tread: 

8S 



In the roar of broken boulders split from rocky 

shoulders, 
In the thunder of snow sliding, or under the appalling 
Rending of glacier ice or hoarse cataracts falling: 
And I knew not what could save me but the unholy 

guiding 
That some demon gave me. Thrice I fell, and thrice 
In torrents of blue ice-water slipp'd and was toss'd 
Like a dead leaf, or a ghost 
Harried by thin buffetings of wind 
Downward to Tartarus at daybreak. 
Downward to the regions of the lost. . . . 
But the rushing waters ceased, and the bitter wind fell : 
How I cannot tell, unless that I had come 
To the hollow heart of the storm where the wind is 

dumb; 
And there my gelid blood thawed, glowed, and grew 

warm. 
While a black-Hooded form caught at my arm, and 

stayed 
And held me as I swayed, until, at last, I saw 
In a strange unworldly awe, at the gate of light I stood : 
86 



And I entered, alone. . . . 

^Behold a cavern of stone carven, and in the midst 
A brazier that hissed with tongued flames, leaping 
Over whitened embers of gummy frankincense, 
Into a fume of dense and fragrant vapour, creeping 
Over the roof to spread a milky coverlet 
Softer than the woof of webby spider's net. 
But never spider yet spun a more delicate wonder 
Than that which hung thereunder, drooping fold on 

fold, 
Silks that glowed with fire of tawny Oxus gold, 
Richer than ever flowed from the eager fancy of man 
In his vain desire for beauty that endures: 
And on the floor were spread by many a heaped daiwan 
Carpets of Kurdistan, cured skins, and water-ewers 
Encrusted with such gems as emperors of Hind 
(Swart conquerors, long dead) sought for their dia- 
dems. 
No other light was there but one torch, flaring 
Against a square of sky possessed by the wind. 
And never another sound but the tongued flames creep- 
ing. 

87 



'At last, my eyes staring into the clouded gloom, 
Saw that the caverned room with shadowy forms was 

strewn 
In heavy sleep or swoon fallen, who did not move 
But lay as mortals lie in the sweet release of love. 
And stark between them stood huge eunuchs of'ebony, 
Mute, motionless, as they had been carven of black 

wood. 
But these I scarcely saw, for, through the flame was seen 
Another, a queen, with heavy closed eyes 
White against the skies of that empurpled night 
In her loveliness she lay, and leaned upon her hand: 
And my blood leapt at the sight, so that I could not 

stand 
But fell upon my knees, pleading, and cried aloud 
For her white loveliness as Ixion for his cloud: 
And my cry the silence broke, and the sleepers awoke 
From their slumber, stirred, and rose every one, — save 

those 
Mute eunuchs of ebony, those frowning caryatides. 
Slowly she looked at me, and when I cried again 
Ifi yearning and in pain, she beckoned with her hand. 

88 



Then from my knees rose I, and greatly daring, 

Through the hazy air, past the brazier flaring 

And the hissing flame, crept, until I came 

Unto the carven seat, and kissed her white feet; 

And she smiled, but spake not. 

When she smiled the sleepers wavered as the grass 

Of a cornfield wavers when the ears are swept 

By the breath of brown reapers singing as they pass, 

Or grass of woody glades when a wund that has slept 

Wakens, and invades their moonlit solitude. 

When the hazels shiver and the birch is blown 

To a billow of silver, but oaks in the wood 

Stand firm nor quiver, stand firm as stone: 

So, amid the sleepers, the black eunuchs stood. 

When the sleepers stirred faintly in the heat 

Of that painted room a silken sound I heard, 

And a thin music, sweet as the brown nightingale 

Sings in the jealous shade of a lonely spinney, 

Stranger far than any music mortal made 

Fell softer than the dew falleth when stars are pale. 

Sweet it was, and clear as light, or as the tears 

That sad Narcissus wears in the spring of the year 

89 



On barren mountain ranges where rain falls cool 
And every lonely pool is sprayed with broken light: 
So cool, so beautiful, and so divinely strange 
I doubted if it came from any marshy reed 
Or hollow fluting stem pluck'd by the hands of men, 
Unless it were indeed that airy fugitive 
Syrinx, who cried and ran before the laughing eyes 
Of goat-footed Pan, and must for ever live 
A shadowy green reed by an Arcadian river — 
But never music made of Ladon's reedy daughter 
Or singing river-water more sweet than that which 

stole, 
Slow as amber honey wells from the honeycomb. 
Into my weary soul with solace and strange peace. 
So, trembling as I lay in a dream more desolate 
Than is the darkened day of the mid-winter north, 
I heard the voice of one who sang in a strange tongue, 
And I know not what he sang save that he sang of love, 
The while they led me forth unheeding, till we came 
Unto a chamber lit with one slow-burning flame 
That yellow horn bedims, and laid me down, and there 
90 



They soothed my bruised limbs, and combed my tangled 

hair, 
And salved my limbs with rarely-mingled unguents 

pressed 
By hands of holy ones who dream deneath the suns 
Of Araby the Blest, and so, when they had bathed 
My burning eyes with milk of dreamy anodyne 
And cool'd my throat with wine, 
In robings of cool silk my broken body they swathed, 
Sandals of gold they placed upon my feet, and round 
My sad sun-blistered brows a silver fillet bound — 
Decking me with the pride of a bridegroom that goes 
To the joy of his bride and is lovely in her eyes — 
And led me to her side. Then, as a conquering prince, 
I, who long since had been battered and tost 
Like a dead leaf or ghost buffeted by wild storms, 
Came to her white arms, conquering, and was lost, 
Yet dared not gaze upon the beauty that I dreamed. 
So, in my trance, it seemed that a shadowy soft dance 
Coiled slowly and unwound, swayed, beckoned, and 

recovered 
As hooded cobra bound by hollow spells of sound 

91 



Unto the piper sways; so silently they hovered 

I only heard the beat of their naked feet, 

And then, another sound. . . . 

A dull throb thrumming, a noise of faint drumming, 

Threatening, coming nearer, piercing deeper 

Than a dream lost in the heart of a sleeper 

Into those deeps where the dark fire gloweth, 

The secret flame that every man knoweth. 

Embers that smoulder, fires that none can fan, 

Terrible, older than the mind of man. . . . 

Before he crawled from his swamp and spurned 

The life of the beast that dark fire burned 

In the hidden deeps where no dream can come: 

Only the throbbing of a drum 

Can wake it from its smouldering — 

Sightless, soundless, senseless, dumb — 

Dumb as those blind seeds that lie 

Drown'd in mud, and shuddering, 

I knew that I was man no more. 

But a throbbing core of flesh, that knew 

Nor beauty, nor truth, nor anything 

But the black sky and the slimy earth : 

92 



Roots of trees, and fear, and pain, 
The blank of death, the pangs of birth, 
An inhuman thing possess'd 
By the throbbing of a drum : 
And my lips were strange and numb, 
But they kissed her white breast. . . . 
Then, being drunk with pride and splendour of love, 

I cried: 
* "O spring of all delight, O mooned mystery, 
O living marvel, white as the dead queen of night, 
O flower, and O flame . . . tell me at least thy name 
That, from this desolate height, I may proclaim its 

wonder 
To the lost lands hereunder before thy beauty dies 
As fades the fire of dawn upon a peak of snow!" ' 
Then: ^Xook," she sighed, ^^into my eyes, and thou shalt 

know." 
So, with her fingers frail, she pressed my brows, and so. 
Slowly, at last, she raised my drooping eyelids pale. 
And in her eyes I gazed. 

^Then fear, than love more blind, 
Caught at my heart and fast in chains of horror bound- 

93 



As one who in profound and midnight forest ways 
Sees in the dark the burning eyes of a tiger barred 
Or stealthy footed pard blaze in a solemn hate 
And lust of human blood, yet cannot cry, nor turning 
Flee from the huddled wood, but stands and sees his 

fate, 
Or one who in a black night, groping for his track. 
Clings to the dizzy verge of a cragged precipice, 
Shrinks from the dim abyss, yet dare not venture back, 
And no sound hears but the hiss of empty air 
Swirling past his ears. ... So, in a hideous 
Abandonment of hope, I waited for her kiss. 
Then the restless beat of the muttering drum 
Rose to a frenzied heat; the naked dancers leapt 
Insolent through the flame, laughing as they came 
With parted lips; their cries deadened my ears, my eyes 
Throbbed with the pattering of their rapid feet. 
And the whirling dust of their dancing swept 
Into my throat unslaked, dry-parched with love's 

drought, 
Until my mouth was pressed upon her burning mouth 
In a kiss most terrible. . . . Oh, was it pride, or shame 

94 



Unending, without name, or ecstasy, or pain 
Or desperate desire ? Alas ! I cannot tell, 
Save that it pierced my trembling soul and body with 

fire. 
For, while her soft lips clove to mine in love, she drove 
A flaming blade of steel into my breast, and I, 
Rent with a bitter cry, slid from her side and fell 
Clutching in dumb despair the dark unbraided hair 
My passion had despoiled; while she, like serpent 

coiled, 
Poised for another stroke, terribly, slowly, smiled. 
Saying: "O stranger, red, red are my lips, and sweet 
Unto those lips so red are the kisses of the dead: 
Far hast thou wandered, far, for the kisses of Thamar." 
Then a deep silence fell on the frenzy and the laughter; 
The leaping dancers crept to the shadows where they 

had slept, 
And the mute eunuchs stood forth, and hugely bent 
Above my body, spent in its pool of blood. 
And hove me with black arms, while the queen fol- 
lowed after 
With stealthy steps, and eyes that burned into the night 

95 



Of my dying brain, till, with her hand, she bade 
Them falter, and they stayed, while, eagerly, she 

propped 
My listless head that dropped downward from my 

shoulders, 
And slowly raised it up, raised it like a cup 
Unto her lips again, 

Then shuddered, trembled, shrunk, as though her 

mouth had drunk 
A potion where the fell fire of poison smoulders. 
And a darkness came, and I could see no more. 
But in my ears the roar of lonely torrents swelled 
And stilled my breath for ever, as though a wave ap- 
palling 
Had broken in my brain, and deep to deep were calling : 
And I felt my body falling down and down and down 
Into a blank of death, where dumb waters roll 
Endlessly, only knowing, that her dagger had stabbed 

my breast, 
But her kiss had killed my soul. 
And now I know no rest until again I stand 
Where that lost city's towers rise from the dreamy sand, 

96 



Until I reach the gate where the lips of Asia wait, 
Till I cross the desert's drought, and the rivers of the 

south, 
And shiver through the night under those summits 

white 
That soar above Cathay; until I see the light 
Flame from those tyrannous glooms where, like a tired 

star 
In stormy darkness, looms the castle of Thamar.' 



97 



Envoi 

Now that the hour has come, and under the lonely 
Darkness I stumble at the doors of death, 
It is not hope, nor faith 

That here my spirit sustaineth, but love only. 

In visions, in love: only there have I clutched at di- 
vinity: 

But the vision f adeth ; yet love fades not : and for this 

I would have you know that your kiss 
Was more to me than all my hopes of infinity. 

Therein you made me divine . . , you, who were moon 

and sun for me, 
You, for whose beauty I would have forsaken the 

splendour of the stars 
And my shadowy avatars 
Renounced : for there is nothing in the world you have 

not done for me. 
98 



So that when at length all sentient skill hath forsaken 

me, 
And the bright world beats vainly on my conscious- 
ness, 
Your beauty shineth no less: 
And even if I were dead I think your shadow would 

awaken me. 



99 



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